Angela Hill as a broadcasting icon whom we have welcomed into our homes for many years, but she also is well known for her dedication to animal welfare. In 2006, when she received the Dorothy Dorsett Brown Humanitarian of the Year Award at the LA/SPCA&#8217;s Howling Success Gala, she said: &#8220;My love of animals...
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Pets at SPCA to benefit from a mother's love

We all know WWL-TV anchor Angela Hill as a broadcasting icon whom we have welcomed into our homes for many years, but she also is well known for her dedication to animal welfare. In 2006, when she received the Dorothy Dorsett Brown Humanitarian of the Year Award at the LA/SPCA’s Howling Success Gala, she said: “My love of animals has been the one constant in my life literally since childhood. It is truly what has made my life rich.”

Those words feel even more poignant when you realize that the person who instilled this childhood love in Angela — her mother, Dorothy Hammond — died last month.

To honor Mrs. Hammond’s lifelong dedication to animals, the Dorothy Hammond Memorial Fund has been established in her honor at the Louisiana SPCA.

The most important gifts our parents give us often are intangible lessons and examples that stay with us and guide us in our own lives.

For Hill and her sister, Pamela, their mother “Dot” instilled in them a love and respect for companion animals that has marked their own lives in a positive and enduring way.

“Mother was clearly the reason I have the love for animals that I have today,” Angela Hill said. “She taught my sister and me early on that our ‘mutt’ — always a shelter dog, by the way — was part of the family to be loved and respected. Through her eyes and actions, I learned what the human-animal relationship was all about.”

Asked if there was one thing that crystallizes what her mother taught her, Angela Hill shared a defining moment.

She had just adopted her own first dog, Horatio, a beautiful basset hound. “Horatio became mother’s first grand-dog,” she said.

“She took him to a professional photographer, had a 16-by-20 photo made and magnificently framed, and placed it in the entryway of her business, an employment agency in Corpus Christi. She had a brass plate made for the bottom of the frame inscribed with the phrase ‘Horatio Arkin Hill, Our Founder.’ ”

Hill said she was thrilled to see Horatio featured so prominently on her mother’s wall, but she questioned whether other businesspeople might understand it. Without hesitation her mother replied, “If they don’t see the importance of Horatio in our lives, it’s their loss.”

In the last years of her life, Hammond was comforted by the love of her cat, Lester, whom she had saved from a snow drift in North Andover, Mass., 19 years ago. “Mother was blind and wheelchair-bound for the last nine years,” Angela Hill said. “Lester slept on her stomach or her head every single day and night. He literally took care of her. They were so devoted to each other that my sister and I prayed that when the time came, they would go together.”

Lester did eventually die, and, four months later, so did Hammond.

Even in death, though, Hammond continues to demonstrate the enduring power of the human-animal bond. “Mother’s ashes will be interred in a small garden at her church, and Lester’s ashes will be spread under a tree next to her,” Hill said.

If you would like to make a donation to the Dorothy Hammond Memorial Fund, you can send it to: LA/SPCA, Attn: Dorothy Hammond Memorial Fund, 1700 Mardi Gras Blvd., New Orleans, LA 70114. You also can donate via the website: www.la-spca.org/angelahill.

All proceeds will go to the care of animals at the LA/SPCA Animal Rescue and Care Center. For more information, call 504.762.3314.

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An LA/SPCA Adoption Option program will be held at Longue Vue Gardens, 7 Bamboo Road, on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon. Animal adoption counselors and volunteers will be on hand to help you select the right pet for your family. Visit www.la-spca.org for more information.